Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image

Words: Mike Blanchard

 “Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image,”  Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, 2014, Aperature, New York NY

I picked up this book at Blue Moon Camera in Portland on a recent visit. The book is part of the superlative Aperture Photography Workshop Series. It was an impulse buy. I just needed something to occupy some down time. And boy, did it.   

“On Street Photography” is so much more than I expected. The design is very open. Each page features a single image paired with a few paragraphs discussing photographic concepts. These are distinct lessons or philosophical points on photography delivered in short, pithy bursts.

I found myself reading slowly and being challenged at each page by something deep. It is a book you almost want to make notes on as you read it.  Open any page and there is something that will make you think.   

Webb and Norris Webb challenge the photographer to break out of preconceptions and embrace serendipity, chance and tension. To recognize the power of a journey when you open yourself to it.   

The images are not exclusively those of the authors. Photos by Cartier-Bresson, Josef Kedulka, Charles Harbutt, Eugene Richards, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Bruce Davidson and others illustrate lessons and concepts the authors feel are important.   

The book compares Francisco Goya’s painting “The Third Of May” with the Russian photographer Dmitri Baltermants’ photo “Grief 1942” to make the point that the photographer needs to be at the point of attack. Unlike many forms of expression, a photograph requires a high degree of participation by the photographer.

But participation is so much more than just being there. The photographer needs to read, look at art, prepare and be open intellectually and emotionally to see what is in front of the lens. Baltermants’ photo is like a renaissance painting. In it, culture and art pass through the photographer and are transformed into powerful documentary photography.  

Alex Webb has been a member of the Magnum photo agency since 1979. That is about as good a recommendation as you can get for a photographer. His work is in color: bright, vibrant and complex. Often with a whole world laid out in one frame. His method is to walk and look; to immerse himself in an environment.

Webb relates an amusing incident with Josef Kedulka. At a reunion the Czech photographer demanded to see the soles of Webb’s shoes to make sure Webb was spending enough time walking.   

“Although my photographs are often described as complicated, my actual process as a street photographer is pretty simple,” Webb writes. “I sense, almost ‘smell’ the possibility of a photograph. I try to follow the rhythm of the streets.”   

Webb quotes one of his teachers, Charles Harbutt: “I don’t take pictures; pictures take me.” This maxim sums up Webb’s approach and the thrust of the book.   

Rebecca Norris Webb is the secret sauce of the book. Norris Webb started as a poet. After college she faced a stubborn writer's block. In an effort to break out of it she got a camera and went on a year-long photographic journey. She writes, “I fell in love with photography. I realized that the eye focusing these images in my poetry was the same eye looking through the lens.”   

She has since taken up writing again. As you might imagine her photography is poetic and imbued with subtlety, emotion and melancholy. Like poetry there is meter and rhythm to Norris Webb’s images. The more you look at them the more you see how rich they are.   

Webb has published 15 books including “The Suffering of Light.” Norris Webb has published seven books including “Brooklyn: The City Within.” The couple have also authored books together, and they discuss the trials and issues of working together candidly.     

For the documentary photographer, “Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image” is a master class in a deceptively simple package.